Women's flesh as a public forum
 

Duden 95: "in the course of the nineteenth century, female innards and interiority become medically, administratively, and judicially public while, at the same time, the female exterior is privatized ideologically and culturally. These opposed but linked tendencies are both characteristic moments in the social construction of 'woman' as a scientific fact, as well as in the creation of the citizen in industrial society"
 
put differently: a woman's "flesh becomes the forum whose proceedings are of immediate interest to the state and society, to public health and the church, and also to her husband"
 
"Her actual body experience [e.g., quickening] becomes her own private affair, while the scientific fact that a fertilized egg has unleashed a hormonal reaction assumes a momentous social function."

> from Barbara Duden's Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn (1993)

> tagged with #timeline, #personhood, #body, #public_and_private, #women

> created January 24, 2026 at 8:13:31 AM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

selection, arrangement, and original text available for creative reuse under this licensing arrangement

authors' quoted words are their own.


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